I Took This Shift Because Of Her ---
Politics - Justice - And Wrestling With The Angel

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Intelligent Design?

If this guy's theory were true, it would be an example of "Intelligent Design." Here, we find "The Cornell University Library" has published an article on the idea that the Physical Universve may simply be a 3-D Virtual Reality simulation, or in other words, an Intelligently Designed Universe.

Assuming Whitworth is serious, what should we make of this idea? He readily admits that this is a weird idea but points out that it is no more strange than many widely held views in physics such as the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, the big bang and Boltzmann brains.

So how would we be able to tell if our universe was a simulation? Whitworth says that if reality was to do something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual. But he falls short of suggesting what this might be.

(As an aside, there are plenty of mathematical algorithms that are incomputable. They are the products of a physical human mind, so if they count as something that information processing could not come up with, Whitworth's idea is already dead in the water.)

Whitworth goes on to suggest various ways in which phenomenon associated with quantum mechanics and relativity can be explained in terms of VR.

He also claims that VR can resolve many of the philosophical questions associated with the Big Bang, such as what caused it and how could it arise when there was no space and time. His answer is that the universe simply booted up although he conveniently ignores all the questions that such a "Big Boot" would raise.

Whether the VR hypothesis is actually testable is a question Whitworth avoids. But without testable predictions about the universe that would distinguish this idea from other theories, the VR hypothesis is pure philosophy.